Question 1

How do I determine my ad spend budget?

Accepted Answer

**Brand New Campaigns** *Should Be Free to Spend* - When launching a new campaign, we often set the budget extra high so there is no risk for a limitation in reach in the first few days when the matching algorithms start their learning process. Overspending in the first few days can be compensated down the road.
What To Do About The Ever-So-Present **“Limited By Budget”** Message - When Google gives this message in the status column, you might choose to  act upon it or wait. This decision depends on the timing and the ROAS of both the campaign and the overall account.

**Why It Matters** - When a campaign doesn’t have enough ad budget to show the ad enough, it can have a compounding negative effect on campaigns. For example, when someone first clicks on your ad but doesn’t convert, the campaign might not have enough budget remaining to show the ad to them the next time they search, which is often the time that they’re ready to buy. Limited by budget can also be detrimental to your conversions per cost ratio, because how much you are able to spend per click affects how far up on the page you’ll be. For example, a smart shopping ad might be hidden by the “view more” button, or the search ad is showing at the very bottom under all the organic results. So, raising the budget slightly can often act as a catalyst for raising ROAS.

Increasing the budget almost always has a compounding effect on the ad performance: As the ad begins to appear more frequently, it "snowballs" into a handful of other phenomena, like leads viewing the ad more than once, the machine algorithms honing in on the number of impressions needed before a conversion, etc. So expect the cost per lead to decrease after adding more budget."

**When To Act** -  While limited by budget can be harmful, *raising the budget can also be harmful if it doesn’t manage to raise the ROAS*; This is because a campaign that doesn’t have a proven ROAS is essentially losing money with every dollar that it spends and so, in that case, more budget will just mean more money lost.

*If the ROAS is already proven* and you can see an accelerated conversion rate in Google’s recommendation (click on the “limited by budget” error message), then this is a no brainer: more budget means more profit.

*If the ROAS isn’t proven*, you may want to see if an increased budget can help it get there by removing the compounding negative effects that a limited by budget campaign is struggling with. You can still consider increasing the budget as long as the account’s overall ROAS across all campaigns is proven. Optimize everything else first, because throwing more money at a problem as an experiment to see if it will make the problem go away is a risk, so it’s best to get the account to a good place first to avoid jeopardizing the whole account too much.

Question 2

Providing Solutions 8 with access to your Google My Business (GMB) account

Accepted Answer

1. Sign in here: https://www.google.com/business/ 2. Choose the account you would like us to have access to 3. Choose "Users" on the left hand side 4. Select the "Invite new users" icon 5. Enter the email address you have been provided by your customer manager 6. Choose the role: "Manager" 7. Select "Invite"

Question 3

What is data feed watch, and why do we use it?

Accepted Answer

If you are an eCommerce company, Data Feed Watch (DFW) is the platform we use in order to optimize your product feed. It allows you to customize the product feed attributes before they are sent to Google Merchant Center (which is the tool that then uploads your product listings into Google Shopping, Google Product Ads, and Google Commerce Search). DFW is part of the reason why shopping ads are so successful.

Using DFW we have a live connection to the site. This means whenever there’s stock issues, page issues, 404 issues, DFW will see that and stop the ads. Where DFW also protects us, is if there is a product issue that GMC catches first, it gets "disapproved". If this continues to happen, it can ultimately lead to a GMC suspension which stops all ads. This is paid platform that we pay for because it helps us have a profitable shopping campaign for you.

On the other hand, if you were to send us a static spreadsheet version of your product feed, and a product encounters an issue, then Google Ads will still send traffic to those pages that you can’t commoditize. This means we will often be paying for clicks even though people can’t purchase the product. If we see the conversion value drop, we would have to stop the campaigns and investigate it manually in order to figure out what's causing the Smart Shopping campaign to spend without getting any conversion value.

It is important to have the most accurate and relevant data possible (product names, prices, images, descriptions, attributes, and much more); this way, Google can do the best job at targeting users based on that information.

Question 4

Why Do You Bill According to Approved Advertising Budget, Not Ad Spend?

Accepted Answer

*The “approved monthly ad spend” is a budget set by the Advertiser. Solutions 8 bills according to the approved budget regardless of the actual ad spend.*

Let’s take a moment to explain this line in our PPC Agreement.

## It sounds simple: set a budget, spend the money, increase traffic.
But the truth is, a whole lot of work goes into spending money effectively in Google Ads. In fact, Google often limits the amount of money you can spend on any given campaign. This means we have to do extra work to find new avenues for your ad spend in order to fulfill your budget.

So, let’s say we created three campaigns for your business and your approved budget is $10,000.

***What happens if Google limits us to $2,000 on each campaign?***

Well, with $4,000 left in the budget, we get to work.

## The work behind the ad spend.
With money left over in the budget ($4,000 in this example), our team of strategists get to work to find new opportunities and pockets of traffic. What does this look like?

* Conducting additional keyword research
* Testing new bidding strategies
* A/B testing new campaigns
* Building different channels like YouTube and Display to expand outreach
* Creating new ad copy

## Traffic is inventory. 
To visualize this spending challenge, let’s pretend that instead of asking us to purchase traffic for your site, you’re asking us to purchase apples—$10,000 worth of apples, to be exact.

We go to the nearest grocery store and purchase all the apples they have. But, we could only spend $6,000 (I know, that’s a lot of apples).

Now, we have to drive to every other grocery store nearby—maybe hours away or at tiny farmers markets—in order to spend the remaining $4,000.

Whether we hit our goal budget or not, the effort it took to drive around and find every apple possible was just as difficult (if not more difficult) as spending the full budget in one grocery trip.

To take this analogy another step further, this chase gets more difficult if the product is more obscure, like passion fruit or horned melon.

## We’re not going to let your budget stay at an attempted threshold.
Overshooting your budget doesn’t benefit either of us.

If we have a difficult time meeting your requested ad budget in our first month together, we may give it another go—but we’ll never let your budget stay at a hard-to-match goal for long.

## Basing our fees off the ad budget rather than spend holds us both accountable.
I’ll close with this:

Billing according to your ad budget enforces appropriate expectations by both parties. This keeps you from overspending and keeps us from depleting our resources chasing traffic inventory.

Additionally, there will be no surprises in your monthly billing; this keeps us from the meticulous nickel-and-diming that leads to management nightmares on both ends.

Have any other questions? We’re here to help!

Question 5

How often do we meet to review the campaigns?

Accepted Answer

This report is not proprietary and is easily reconcilable within your Google Ads account (which you retain full ownership of).

After you receive the report, we offer a meeting to review all activities in your campaigns, what happened over the last month, what is happening now, and what our plans are for future growth.

Question 6

What are Cart Abandonment Campaigns and Cart Abandonment Audiences?

Accepted Answer

If you see significantly more product value being added to the cart than what is being purchased, consider adding a Cart Abandonment Audience to a Remarketing Campaign to try to get those hot leads back.

Use Display Ads so that any other websites they visit, like competitor sites, they will see your ad saying, “Finish your checkout and you’ll get 10% off with coupon code x”.

(***Make sure to only add new audiences to the Remarketing Campaign after the campaign has proven that the ROAS is there or else you will simply be putting budget & effort into something that converts at a negative net profit.)

Question 7

How To Share The Facebook Pixel with A Business

Accepted Answer

In order to share your Facebook pixel with a business, you will need to already have a business manager. If you don't already have one, you can set one up [here](https://business.facebook.com/overview/).

Once you've done that, go to [Business Manager Settings](https://business.facebook.com/settings/).

Next, go to “Pixels” under Data Sources.
![2020-11-23_14-30-22.jpg](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/8yrNvndYcJ/2020-11-23_14-30-22.jpg)

Select the pixel and click “Assign Partners.”
![2020-11-23_14-32-21.jpg](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/kKkXeRoxXZ/2020-11-23_14-32-21.jpg)

Enter the Solutions 8 Business ID: 915738658498354
![2020-11-23_14-32-46.jpg](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/WEI1lgheyd/2020-11-23_14-32-46.jpg)

Question 8

How do I use landing pages?

Accepted Answer

It used to be standard practice to create a designated landing page that would “squeeze” people into a sale because it focuses on one product, there’s no menu, no distractions, no alternate buttons, etc.

This is not recommended because on average people view 2.8 pages before converting.

So, this means a new visitor who lands on the website’s product page, might also view other products or view the homepage or the contact us page before going back to their original landing page to purchase/convert.

Question 9

Adding Users To Your Google Analytics Account

Accepted Answer

In order for your PPC campaigns to perform at the highest level, Solutions 8 will need access to your Google Analytics account. Having access to your Google Analytics account will allow us as an agency to link your AdWords account to it, which will allow us to do a number of really useful things. For instance, once your Analytics account is connected to AdWords, we will be able to track website conversions as well as the paths user took to complete a conversion. This is extremely valuable information for us as advertisers and for you as a business owner, because it allows us to spot areas of possible strength or weakness along the customers journey. This will in turn aid in the overall strategy of the PPC campaign. Pretty neat, huh? So it is absolutely imperative that we connect your AdWords account to your Google Analytics. In order to do that, you or your webmaster will need to ad us as a user in Google Analytics. If you aren't familiar with the process, don't worry. Simply follow this step-by-step guide, and you'll see it's as easy as a walk in the park. ### Step 1 The first thing you need to do is to go to Google Analytics and login to your dashboard. ### Step 2 Once you're logged in, go ahead and click on the "Admin" icon in the lower lefthand side of the screen. ![step 2.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/F8bP8kYmCX/step%202.png) ### Step 3 Once you've clicked on "Admin", you should see your Admin panel. In the Admin panel, there will be 3 columns labeled "Account", "Property", and "View". In the Account column on the left, click on "User Management". ![step 3.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/YhAbTetvDr/step%203.png) ### Step 4 After you click on "User Management", a tab will popup labeled "Account users". In the upper righthand corner of the "Account users" tab, you should see a "+". When you find it, click on it. ![step 4.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/mVOO4Em4NG/step%204.png) ### Step 5 Once you're on the screen above, please make sure that the "Edit", "Collaborate", "Read & Analyze", and "Manage Users" boxes are all checked. This is a very important step, and it is vital that it is done correctly. We need access to all 4 of these things as we have a team of people who will need access, and this will allow us to add and remove people on our side without the constant back. This limits the drag on your campaign and the makes it much easier for all parties involved. ![step 5.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/pK7hN3oZZ0/step%205.png) ### Step 6 In the "Enter email addresses" form field, enter "Solutions8ads@gmail.com". Also, make sure that the box "Notify new users by email" is checked. That will notify us that you've added us as an account user. Once you've done that, go ahead and click on "Add" to finish things up. ![step 6.png](https://malcolm-en-gb.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/instances/MpD6OKc9u8/resources/CcjsqpUljh/step%206.png) You're all done! That wasn't so bad! Right?

Question 10

Here's What You Can Expect Now That You've Been Onboarded As A Client

Accepted Answer

Now that you have been onboarded as a client there are just a few technical things that we need to set up for your website, in order to properly track calls and conversions in order to better understand what optimizations need to be made.

This is a guide for you to know what these tools are, why they're important, and how they're paramount to the success of the campaign.

Don't worry. You don't need to do any of these things (that's what we're here for).

We might need to request access from you for some of these tools. If that's the case, we will reach out to you and make the process as easy as possible.

### Google Tag Manager (GTM) Installation
Google Tag Manager is a tool that we use to track specific actions and events that happen on your website, such as conversions.

This tool integrates with Google Analytics, and allows us to see how your website visitors behave on your website.

By setting this up, we can track things like which forms a user has filled out, who has visited the website (important for remarketing), what links users are clicking on, etc.

Similar to how video cameras work to see what's going on in a physical store, Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics allows us to replicate that in a digital environment.

### Call Tracking Metrics (CTM)
Call Tracking Metrics is important to set up, particularly if your goal is to have leads call your business.

This feature allows us to track conversations that leads have with your business. Our team will be listening in all of the phone calls to gauge the level of quality conversations that are being had. If lead quality is excellent, Call Tracking Metrics allows us to identify what campaign generated that phone calls so we can increase the frequency of calls from that campaign.

### Conversion Tracking (Google Analytics)
Conversion Tracking helps us as advertisers to see when a user completes a desired action on your website, e.g. filling out a form, completing a purchase, etc.

Conversion Tracking utilizes Google Tag Manager in order to track actions and conversions.

### Pixel Installation (Facebook)
Should your business goals require advertisements on Facebook, we will need to install what's known as Facebook's "Pixel".

The Pixel is Facebook's version of Google's "Tag", and it accomplishes many of the same functions that Google's Tag does.

### Competitive Analysis
It's important to understand that other businesses in your space are likely advertising on Google as well.

Part of the process of creating a successful campaign is to see how your competitors are advertising. We uses a myriad of tools to identify what your competition is doing, if it's working, and how we can improve on it.

### Ad Copy Creation
The Ad Copy is what a potential customer is going to see on Google when they type in their keyword to the search bar.

Every ad that we create will be relevant to the product/service that you sell and will be specific to the group of keywords that best describe your product.

### Campaign Creation
Once we've received all the information relevant to your campaign, we can start the process of actually building out the PPC campaign. This is a complex process that involves taking the information that you filled out in the on-boarding process and translating that into keywords and advertisements.

Having the proper keywords, key phrases, ad budget, ad schedule, ad groups, landing page destination, etc. in place make sure that your ads are being shown to the right people, at the right time.

Also, depending on what your campaign goals are, it's at this stage that we configure the campaign to fit your desired customer actions, i.e. increase quality phone calls with potential customers, eCommerce transaction, contact form completions, acquiring customers for a particular cost, etc.

### After The Campaign Has Been Created, But Before Launch
After the campaign has been created, we will schedule a time to review the campaign and discuss what has been created, why it's been created in that way, and the expected outcome.